Chapter 10

Vigilante

Darren Parker lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling, his eyes unseeing, his mind addled hours ago by the words of the crone who had been released from her crystal prison in a flash of light, and had appeared before him as a beautiful, voluptuous young woman.

Earlier that day.

'Thank thee, Darren. Thou hast saved me from an eternity of torment,' Lilith told him.

'You're real! I can't believe it.'

She smiled at him sweetly and teasingly brushed her lips against his cheek. 'Verily, and I am forever grateful. But I must ask thee, where is the Book of Power.'

'Book of Power?' Darren asked.

'The book from which you read the words.'

Darren showed her the few pages of manuscript he'd found in the small box. 'There was no book, just these few pages . . . in that box there, with a crystal ball.'

'Nooo!' Lilith wailed in despair.

'Is the book important?'

'It containeth the knowledge of my kin. Without it I cannot contact them.' She sidled up to him and rubbed her body against his. 'Without it, I am alone.'

Darren thought about the night before and an online comment by one of their followers, EgonSpengler285, he'd said the papers were part of a mysterious manuscript. He looked into Lilith's eyes and smiled. 'I think I might be able to help you with that.'

He opened his laptop and switched it on, as Lilith watched his every move. He found the video blog they had made, and the name of the manuscript, the Voynich manuscript. He put the name into SearchWise, and found pages of images of the Voynich manuscript which had been scanned onto web pages.

'That is it!' Lilith exclaimed. 'What a wondrous contrivance,' Lilith said, stroking the top of the laptop. 'A world of knowledge in such a small object.'

Darren laughed. 'The data is stored in a server,' he told her, and saw her puzzled expression. 'It's like a library, a library which this laptop can read. You just type what you want to know into SearchWise, and it gives you the answer.'

Lilith's eyes flashed with excitement. 'Wondrous! Oh Darren, thou truly art my saviour. Let me reward thee with these words . . . Mind so bright, I shalt make it darker. Heed my words Darren Parker.'

Darren's eyes glazed over, and he collapsed onto his bed, completely unconscious. motionless, his mind blank. Lilleth's youthful beauty faded, revealing her true form as an old crone with a hunched back, wrinkled skin, and a sinister expression. She laughed wickedly. 'Foolish mortal. Now, to regain my true power.' She turned to Darren's laptop on his desk, typing awkwardly with her gnarled fingers, mumbling to herself as she went.

By late afternoon, Lilith had learnt how to speak modern English, and she had found a fourteen sided building, a reconstruction of the building she remembered. Now she would travel to London, with the laptop, and read the words which would release her people from their prison.

Lilleth turned towards the door, her mind set on her destination. 'London awaits, and with it, my ultimate power. The Globe Theatre will soon be mine.' The door creaked shut behind her, leaving Darren in his enchanted slumber.

It was a few hours later, when Gary was out of Recovery and in a side room on the surgical ward. The surgeon had found Andy in the waiting room, and explained that the surgery had gone well.

'So what happened?' Andy asked, as he sat in a chair at Gary's bedside.

'The usual,' Gary replied. 'Because I was livin' rough, a gang assumed I was usin' an' wanted to recruit me. I told 'em I wasn't interested.'

'And they didn't like that?'

Gary shook his head on the pillow. 'Membership was compulsory apparently, said they'd only ask once . . . I knew what that meant, so I tried to leg it.'

'And that's when the knives came out,' Andy said as a statement, rather than a question.

'Yeah. The gang leader stabbed me in the leg to stop me runnin', and then stuck me in the side a couple of times. He laughed and said I should have taken his offer.'

'Do you know who he was, or what the gang are called?' Andy asked.

'I think the leader was called Tommo, and they call themselves The Barking Mad Bastards . . . Mainly because they are barking mad, but also because Barking is their manor,' Gary told him, and then looked worried. 'Yer not thinkin' of goin' after 'em are ya, because they have some serious backup in the East End, Andy.'

'Connected to The Firm are they?' The Firm was a notorious London underworld organisation, often known as the London Mafia.

'Yeah, an' y'don't want to be messin' with them.'

Andy gave him a lopsided smile. 'Oh, I don't know. It's been a while since I've had any fun.'

'But Andy,' Gary started to protest.

'You just lie there and get better. You're not going anywhere anytime soon with all those tubes coming out of your body. And I expect to see you here when I get back,' Andy told him sternly. 'No running off like you did last time. I came to find you in the restaurant, and they told me you'd scoffed your food and made off.'

'Well, I don't like to hang around in one place for long.'

Andy smiled at him. 'You will, when you've got something worth hanging around for.'

'Y'think?' Gary asked.

'Trust me. I've been there, done that, and got the T-shirt.'

It was night time in the Smith household. Earlier, they had eaten their evening meal, the kids had done their homework, watched some TV, and then gone to bed. John and Rose were lying in bed, their backs propped up by pillows. John was wearing his blue and white striped pyjama bottoms, the type which tied at the front with a cord, and left an opening at the front, convenient for having a pee in the middle of the night. Rose was wearing a long, black T-shirt with a letter "T" made of hexagons. It was part of the Torchwood merchandise range they now sold, and she thought it would make a good nightshirt.

John was on his laptop on a group chat with a couple of scientists; José Rodriguez, a professor of material sciences at UNAM in Mexico, and George Aitken, professor of entomology at Keele University. After Rodriguez had contacted him about an exciting discovery, he thought these two should really talk to each other. He was using ear buds to listen to the conversation.

['Most spider's spinnerets are not simple structures with a single orifice producing a single thread,'] Aitken explained. ['But complex structures of many microscopic spigots, each producing one filament. This produces the necessary orientation of the protein molecules, without which the silk would be weak and useless. Spigots can be singular or found in groups, which also permits spiders to combine multiple filaments in different ways to produce many kinds of silk for various purposes.']

['Fascinating,'] Rodriguez said. ['Do you think it would be possible to scale up and manufacture an artificial spinneret to produce a nano filament tether?']

'The spigots would have to be precisely controlled by some smart software,' John told them. 'But yes, the whole system could be scaled up into an orbital platform. Your spinneret could be put into a geostationary orbit and produce a continuous nano filament tether all the way down to the surface. I know a team of talented design engineers at Cybus Industries who would love to take this on . . . I'll introduce you.''

['That would be amazing, John,'] Rodriguez said. ['We must set up a meeting where we can all get together and brainstorm this . . .']

Rose had a pile of books on the bedside table, and was reading through them one by one, jotting notes in a notebook, as she prepared her references for her dissertation.

'Y'know what's frustratin'?' she asked as she read her book. John glanced at her and raised an eyebrow. 'Readin' the latest research and theories, and not bein' able to tell them that they're close, but they won't get the cigar.'

John laughed. 'I know. It's so tempting to just correct their equations and give them the answers. But if we did that . . .'

'I know. They'd miss important steps in their understanding. I so want to give them the "theory of everything" and join the dots between relativity and quantum mechanics.'

'And imagine the chaos you'd create when they started to experiment with time travel.'

'Oh, don't. A paradox nightmare,' Rose laughed. 'How's yer meetin' goin'?'

'Ah, yes, good. This is me giving each of them a part of the equation and letting them join the dots themselves,' John told her. 'José Rodriguez, is a professor of material sciences at UNAM in Mexico. He's discovered a material with incredible tensile strength, the stuff you could make a space elevator tether out of.'

'Really? Wow! That would be a game changer for the space industry,' Rose realised.

'Yeah. But he's only made a few short strands of the stuff in his laboratory.'

'Ah, it doesn't scale up to production levels then?'

'Not yet, no. But I've also got George Aitken, professor of entomology at Keele in the group chat. He's done some amazing work on the Orb Weaver spider and its spinnerets.

Rose made the connection. 'Oh, I get it. If Rodrigues can manufacture an artificial spinneret, he can mass produce his cable and make the space elevator tether.'

'Exactamundo,' John said, and then thought about it. 'Hmm. Haven't used that one before. Sounds too much like correctamundo . . . What do you think?'

Rose closed her book and put it on the bedside table. 'I think, if yer done with yer matchmakin', y'should turn that laptop off and give yer horny wife a good seeing to.' She started kissing his bare chest.

'Sorry guys, something's come up.' He looked under the duvet. 'Literally. Carry on the meeting without me and let me know how you get on.' He closed the laptop and put it on his bedside table.

Rose climbed on top of him and found something else the opening in the front of his pyjamas was convenient for.

Ashley Richardson had stumbled into the world of drugs and addiction totally by accident one evening, when he was invited to a friend's birthday party. He was sixteen at the time, and one of the older kids at the party had introduced him to what he called "wacky baccy". Ashley thought it was just a different blend of loose tobacco for making roll ups, a sweeter, more pleasant odour.

Unfortunately for Ashley, he was one of those people whose brain chemistry made him susceptible to addiction, and after a few "spliffs", he was hooked. Not long afterwards, he was experimenting with cocaine, and then heroin and other hard drugs. With this, came the problem all drug users face . . . how to pay for it. He started shoplifting, then it was petty theft, followed by burglary and car theft.

And now, here he was in his downward spiral, at the back of a local supermarket, near midnight, waiting for his dealer to introduce him to his supplier, who said he could earn some money by running an errand for him. He heard a noise over by the bins, and saw a figure in the shadows.

'Macka, is that you?' he asked the shadowy figure.

The figure put the lid back on a bin and looked at him. 'No. My name ain't Macka.'

As the figure walked towards him, he could see it was an old man in a long, grubby coat, with straggly hair and an unkempt beard. He was carrying a couple of plastic carrier bags, loaded with what Ashley presumed were all his worldly goods.

'What'cha doin' here?' Ashley asked nervously. He didn't think the drug supplier would want any observers watching their business transaction.

The old man looked over his shoulder. 'Checkin' the bins for anythin' useful I can 'ave . . . An' you?'

'None of your business,' Ashley told him sharply.

'Ah, drugs is it?' the old man asked knowingly.

'What makes you think that,' Ashley asked defensively.

'Obvious, innit,' the old man replied. 'Over by the bins, needles, syringes, burnt foil, empty wraps. It don't take a genius to work it out, does it?'

'No, I suppose not,' Ashley agreed. 'Look, you'd better get outta here. I'm meetin' someone, an' I don't think he takes kindly to strangers.'

'Not keen on 'em meself,' the old man replied with a chuckle. He reached into his coat pocket and took out a piece of paper. 'Found this over by the bins. Have a read of it, it might change yer life,' he said mysteriously, as he turned away and went back over to the bins.

Ashley unfolded the paper and saw it was a flyer for a drug rehabilitation charity. He looked back into the shadows with a frown. "Have a read of it, it might change yer life", the old man had said. Without thinking he put the flyer in his pocket.

'Ashley,' someone said as they came around the corner of the building, making him jump.

'Macka? Yeah, it's me,' he replied. Several people were walking towards him, which made him suddenly nervous.

'Good. Glad you could make it,' Macka, his dealer said. Standing next to him was a man who was as broad as he was tall. 'This is Tommo I was tellin' yer about. He's got a little job for ya, if yer interested.'

Seeing the size of Tommo, Ashley was a bit cautious. 'What's the job?'

Tommo walked up to him and towered over him, smiling. 'It's easy. You take a sports bag to a small station outside Manchester with this ticket.' He clicked his fingers, and a bag was held out for him along with a train ticket. 'There'll be a guy sitting on the platform with the same bag. You sit next to him and pick up his bag and come back on the next train. Reckon you can handle that?'

'Sounds easy enough, yeah,' Ashley replied.

Suddenly, there was a clatter of a bin lid being put back on a bin from the shadows. The gang turned and looked into the shadows.

'Who's there?' Tommo called out, putting his right hand in his jacket pocket.

'It's some old fellah rumagin' through the bins,' Ashley told them. 'I told him to bugger off, but he just carried on searchin' the bins.'

Tommo and his gang walked towards the old man. 'I suppose you 'eard everytnin' we said, didn't ya?'

The old man looked up at Tommo. 'I don't hear nothin' I ain't supposed to. I only hear "buy yerself a cuppa tea", or "'ere's a coupla quid for a burger".'

Tommo put his left hand on the old man's shoulder. 'Yer shoulda buggered off when you were told, old timer.' His right hand whipped a knife out of his pocket and thrust it into the old man's abdomen.

The old man gasped, and his knees started to buckle as he held onto Tommo's arm. What happened next though, wasn't what Tommo was expecting. He had a sudden pain in his wrist, as a lock was applied, and the old man stood up straight, moving behind him as he did. Tommo now had his arm behind his back in a painful lock, with his own knife at his throat.

'You know what your mistake was, don't you?' the gravelly voice asked in his ear. 'Going for the body. Unless you aim upwards under the ribs and into the heart, you're not guaranteed a kill, especially if your victim is wearing a Kevlar stab vest. The throat on the other hand gives you a guaranteed kill, with both carotids, jugulars and the trachea. You either die of blood loss to the brain or drown as your own blood goes down the trachea into the lungs.'

Tommo was suddenly very nervous, which wasn't a familiar sensation for him. This man spoke like he was an expert on killing people. 'Who the fuck are you?'

'Listen carefully, because you only have two choices. You can choose to live, or you can choose to die. Which will it be?' the voice asked from behind him.

'What the fuck's goin' on?' Tommo looked at his gang. 'Don't just stand there, get 'im.'

'If anyone moves towards us, then they make your choice for you and you die,' the voice told him. 'You all have to the count of five to get out of here before I draw this knife across his throat . . . One . . .'

'Who the fuck are you?' Tommo asked again.

'A proactive drug counsellor,' the old man answered, winking at Ashley. 'Two . . .'

The members of the gang looked at each other. 'Tommo?'

'Three . . .' The knife nicked the skin on the side of Tommo's throat, drawing a trickle of blood . . . Four.'

Tommo submitted. 'Beat it! Go on, get outta here.' The gang turned tail and ran.

'Good choice,' the gravelly voice told him. 'Now we can get down to business. Y'see, this knife nearly killed a friend of mine, so as you can imagine, I'm really tempted to just drag this blade across your neck and be done with it. But I'd rather you tell me who you work for instead.'

'If I tell you that, I'm dead anyway,' Tommo told him.

'Fair enough. You ready?'

Tommo felt his arm tense up, ready to do the deed. 'No! Wait! What'll y'do if I tell ya? What happens to me?'

'Me? I go after the next in line and work my way up the chain. As for you . . .' The old man sighed. 'Y'know, a few years ago, I'd have just slit your throat and rid the world of your filth. But then I met this man who said I should give people a second chance, and he has this way of looking at you . . . He looks at you with these ancient, brown eyes, which reflect the disappointment he feels if you haven't given them that second chance. Luckily for you, I can see that look in his eyes right now. So, you get arrested, go to prison and take your chances. Hopefully, when you get out, nobody will be coming after you.'

'You're talking about goin' up against an organised crime syndicate. You must be mad,' Tommo told him.

Captain Andy McNab laughed. 'Yeah, you could say, I'm a barking mad bastard.'